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Will Economy Cause NHL to Punch Up Fights?

Nov 11, 2008 – 1:17 PM
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Ted Starkey

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One of the great long-running debates among NHL fans is what role fisticuffs should play in the sport, and this week veteran hockey scribe Kevin Paul Dupont weighs in with his take in Sunday's Boston Globe, with a strong vote for a return of the extra-curricular activities.
Sorry, but at the risk of alienating some very loyal readers, I won't apologize for what I like, and what I know sells. The NHL needs more, not less, of what we saw at the Garden, such as career creampuff Marc Savard jumping into a fracas and firing punches to support Milan Lucic. That's a little like a tofu-loving vegetarian volunteering to work the pit at a pig roast, but hey, you get the idea.
The NHL, in its quest to rise off of basic cable in the late 1980s onto the U.S. broadcast networks, quietly encouraged teams to downplay the fighting aspect of the game and turn up the skill level of the sport. With the faster pace of today's NHL, enforcers are becoming as common as wooden sticks in the top level of the game.


Remember, it wasn't that long ago that tough guy Marty McSorely regularly skated alongside on Wayne Gretzky's line in Edmonton and Los Angeles, but today, you rarely see enforcer Donald Brashear touching the same ice with Alex Ovechkin these days.

Why?

The distinct skill disadvantage of playing an enforcer with your skill player brings down the chance of the talented player to succeed - or, for the opposition, matching up against a talent with a tough guy usually ends up with bad results.

Of course, back when the NHL started down the path to the kinder, gentler NHL, the sports and television landscape was also much different. Hockey was more equated with wrestling among its detractors back then, but other endeavors such as UFC have hit today's mainstream with a much more violent potpourri than most involving Georges Laraque.

The stigma of basic cable isn't quite what it was either, as being on national television isn't the cache it used to be, not as much as being on the league's former cable home, ESPN, is now with the 24/7 hype machine the Worldwide Leader and synergy the network now brings. Ironically, being on the league's former cable home of ESPN is preferable now than the NHL's current NBC/Versus combination.

So now, with wallets tightening and the economy slowing, does that mean a return to the old days where an NHL game virtually guaranteed at least one bout, instead of today's version in which fighting is much harder to be found?

One proponent of bringing back hockey's punch, not surprisingly, is Brian Burke, architect of one of the NHL's toughest teams.

Burke tells the Globe:

"Look, NASCAR can guarantee that it will never have another fatality. All it has to do is set the speed limit at 55 miles an hour. No more crashes. No more fatalities. Of course, no one will want to watch it, either."

Of course, one doesn't have to look far for a major shift between the NHL and North America's secondary professional league, the American Hockey League. Just one step below the NHL is a markedly different game, one where a retro version of the sport is played.

According to hockeyfights.com, so far this season only a dozen of the 30 NHL teams have hit double digits in fight majors so far in 2008-09. Down on the farm, it's all but four of the 29 teams have surpassed that total - despite most teams playing fewer games. The Calgary Flames, who have had 19 majors in 16 games and lead the league in that category, have nothing on the Norfolk Admirals, who have piled up 25 majors in just 12 contests to lead the AHL.

Part of reason of the AHL's preference for pugilism, is of course, the heavy dependence on the gate revenue. Since minor-league teams are more in survival mode than their parent clubs with less exposure on television, more turn to them to get fans in the seats. AHL teams also usually employ more than one player who can throw a punch on their roster despite the fact that the parent club may have the need for just one on their roster at a time.

As a result, there are more fights in the minors despite the NHL trying to limit the amount of punches thrown in its game.

Now, the big question for the NHL is, will they drop the gloves and decide to follow down that road?

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